1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 544. Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Welcome To The Pleasuredome (1984)

This is in many ways a Trevor Horn album, as a lot of his production overshadows all of the band apart from the vocals of Holly Johnson. But that does mean that the biggest tracks on it, the hit singles, are the big and dramatic ones like the 13-minute title track, Relax, and Two Tribes – bass-line driven dance/trance tracks. And the non-Christmas track that manages to be associated with Christmas thanks to the video, the ballad The Power Of Love (one of three tracks with that name out around roughly the same time). Anne Dudley provides the string arrangements for this – we've heard her recently on the Lloyd Cole album, ABC’s Lexicon Of Love, and McClaren’s Duck Rock. She’s part of the Art Of Noise collective, so there’s no surprise to find her on McClaren and Horn projects. 

These, for my money, are the best tracks, even allowing for a certain amount of Streisand Effect in how popular they became – the moment DJ Mike Read refused to play Relax, he guaranteed that people would buy it to find out what the fuss was about. There are some covers of mixed quality – quite a good version of Barrett Strong’s War (huh! What is it good for?) that meshes nicely with the sentiments of Two Tribes and features Chris Barrie (Rimmer from Red Dwarf) doing a Reagan impersonation, and a short but moody cover of Gerry And The Pacemakers’ Ferry (Across The Mersey) that ends with a bit of Liverpudlian-accented dialogue about coming into work late. 

The cover of Springsteen’s Born To Run felt a bit weak to me, as did the version of the Bacharach/David track San José. Since this is a double album, these are typical victims of the Side Three Curse. Also to be found on Side Three is an instrumental piece The Ballad Of 32, a sultry guitar solo (actually pretty cool) that fades into erotic moaning that would make Serge Gainsbourg blush. Black Night White Light is probably the strongest album-only track, with a great bassline. As with many of the basslines on this album, though, it could well be Horn rather than band bassist Mark O’Toole. Whichever it is, they’re one of the key components to the sound of the album. 

There’s sort of a triple theme to the album – the threat of nuclear war under Mutually Assured Destruction, the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures in the face of armageddon, and frequent reminders that Frankie are from Liverpool. I think it’s one of those double albums that doesn’t quite have enough material to sustain a double album – it might have worked better as an LP plus EP mix like UB40’s Signing On, especially if the EP was the track Welcome To The Pleasuredome, and maybe a remix of Relax.